Attempting to offer documentary evidence in support of witness accounts impugning the UPA (or the OUN), Mr. Himka submits the following: “I quote from the book of reports of UPA’s Kolodzinsky division, for example, about how they stumbled upon twelve Hungarian Jews hiding in the forest in Volhynia and “dispatched them to the bosom of Abraham.” “ I can only assume that this is the strongest evidence Mr. Himka has. I apologize for previously misinterpreting this as a possible reference to the Mykhailo Kolodzinsky, chief of the “Sichovyky” in Carpathian Ukraine fighting Hungarians in 1939. I was misled, in particular, by the lack of a timeframe and...

Russian-friendly Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych this week assured the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States that he does not deny the existence of the communist-era famine that killed millions of people in Ukraine in 1932-33, adding that he would even order the famine documents to be declassified. Yanukovich, however, would not recognize the famine as genocide as many other countries and Ukrainian leaders have. The famine statement comes strategically before his visit to the United States to take part in the United Nations Global Summit. His visit will...

Seven months after I “vehemently…responded” to his exposition of Jewish eyewitness accounts on the role of the OUN-UPA, John Paul Himka offers his defense. Frankly, I am surprised by his tardiness since I thought that he had recognized his errors and let this matter rest. More importantly, I am disturbed by his abysmal lack of scholarship and the impossibility of preventing anyone from spouting canards and defamation without recourse. Case in point, Himka confronts the hearsay charge by offering what I can only assume to be his strongest direct testimony, that of a “ten-year-old boy whose father had been killed by Banderites just two months before he testified to the Jewish Historial Commission.” The ten-year old is a sympathetic, but...

We, the undersigned, protest the unlawful detention in Kyiv of the historian, Ruslan Zabily, the director of the Lonsky Street Prison Museum, based Lviv, by officers of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on 8 September 2010. The Ukrainian government’s latest actions in the humanities and the change of vectors in the policy regarding national memory suggest that the political repressions instituted against our colleague, who studies the Ukrainian national liberation movement, particularly the history of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), are no accident. The SBU officers’ unconscionable actions may be interpreted as a blatant attempt to exert psychological pressure and incite fear. The detention of Dr. Ruslan Zabily, the unsanctioned search of the premises of the Lonsky Street Prison Museum...

On September 22, 2010 Ukrainian Canadians gathered at a Vigil before the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa to defend Ruslan Zabily and to express their concern over the policies of the administration of Ukraine’s President, Victor Yanukovych. Organized by the Canadian Conference in Support of Ukraine (CCSU) and supported by the Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union (UCSU), the participants displayed signs calling for the removal of the Minister of Education, Tabachnyk, and...
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Ukrainian Canadians will hold a vigil in defence of human rights in Ukraine on Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 2:00PM at the Embassy of Ukraine, 310 rue Somerset Street West, Ottawa. The vigil will coincide with other demonstrations, including at the United Nations in New York City, were the President of Ukraine is to address the UN General Assembly, and in solidarity with similar protests in Ukraine. Protesters will draw attention to acts of harassment and intimidation including the detention of Mr. Ruslan Zabily, Director of the National Memorial “Prison at Lonsky” Museum in Lviv, Ukraine.* A criminal case has been initiated against Zabily by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) claiming that he disseminated files containing “state secrets.” Computer files at the Museum’s research facilities as well as those in Mr. Zabily’s possession at the time of his detention were confiscated by the SBU...

Ukrainian Canadians, gathered at a Vigil at the Embassy of Ukraine to defend Ruslan Zabily and theNational Memorial “Prison at Lonsky” Museum, have issued this appeal to the Government and people of Ukraine and to the Government and people of Canada. On September 8, 2010, six representatives of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained Ruslan Zabily, Director of the National Memorial “Prison at Lonsky” Museum. The National Memorial is a recently opened museum to the victims of repressions at the Lonsky prison in Lviv, Ukraine, where thousands of Ukrainian political prisoners suffered under Polish, Nazi and Soviet occupations. Mr. Zabily is a historian, who oversees the National Memorial, and serves as a researcher and archivist. Mr. Zabily had just arrived...

Ukraine’s Presidential Administration has resumed the process of removing the management of the National Museum “Lonsky Street Prison” from the mandate of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). According to reports by Ukrayinska Pravda, Secretary of the Presidential Administration Serhiy Liovochkin confirmed that President Viktor Yanukovych has ordered Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and SBU Chief Valeriy Khoroshkovsky to revisit this issue. Those involved with the museum are pleased that the process has finally been renewed and believe that the decision by the President was correct because it is not the role of the Security Service of Ukraine to manage museums. Ruslan Zabilyj, director of the National Museum...

The world's center of gravity is heading eastward so fast that we Europeans can almost feel the ground moving beneath our feet. Because almost all major actors on the international stage are redefining their roles in response to this tectonic shift, Europe must do the same. So it is right that the EU Council of Ministers is meeting to grapple with this challenge. For decades, however, Europeans have been more concerned with unification and constitutional arrangements than with traditional diplomacy. Europe's historic rivalries have, of course, been civilized into a political model that European diplomats often see as applicable across the international arena...

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko called Russian plans for a new pipeline to Europe “wasteful and unnecessary,” as Ukraine seeks to keep its position as the main transit route for Siberian natural gas. The European Union and Russia would be better off making “very limited additional investment” in Ukraine’s existing pipeline network rather than building the South Stream project, Gryshchenko told reporters today in Moscow. “We are clearly telling our Russian friends, but also the Europeans, that we oppose this project and offer an alternative,” Gryshchenko said. “To spend money on a wasteful, unnecessary project is totally against the logic of modern economics.” OAO Gazprom, which relies on Ukrainian pipelines to deliver...